Lethargic Reporting

Is there a loophole in the law that allows newspapers to put in all the wrong data in their articles? The Pune Times, a supplement of the Times of India, on November 20, 2007 had written an article titled 'Riding Their Dreams'. The TNN correspondent was Nozia Sayyed. I should commend them on their choice of fillers. If this is the kind of articles they are publishing, a typical work day just might resemble this:

"Hey we have a quarter page worth of free space left, what do we do about it?"
"Hmmm, when was the last time we ran a story on superbikes in the city? It's been a while right? Rearrange the words and just toss it in."

I have a request, please do not expect all your readers to be misinformed idiots! An excerpt from that article,

"Foreign bikes like Hayabusa, Harley Davidson, Honda CBR, Repsol, Kawasaki and Suzuki...".

Yes, very nice, you know the names of the manufacturers. You have definitely educated me. I mean here I was thinking that Repsol was a Spanish oil and gas company. I never knew that over the years of sponsoring the Honda MotoGP Class team they had gone ahead and started manufacturing their own motorcycles. My bad! I was not aware that slapping a paint job on a bike is enough to be placed in the Motorcycle Manufacturer's List.

I seriously cannot understand this. You type this out on a computer. Presuming your knowledge of computers is more than that of Superbikes, is running a Google or Wikipedia Search that difficult? I would be very particular about an article or photograph that carries my name in the byline.

If this is the level of initiative shown by TNN Correspondents, the terms 'news' and 'reporting' need to be redefined.